Thursday 28 November 2013

Nits and Worms

I am ashamed at my lackadaisical approach to this blogging medium. This thing called life (filled with children) seems to have got the better of me and for those 27 people who logged in yesterday, an indeed anyone who's clicked in in search of some morsel of dreadful gripery, I apologise. Hopefully this is a new leaf and I shall endeavour to post if not twice a year, then at least once.

As the title of this blog would suggest, we here at Stuperior HQ have been very busy.

Nits and worms really isn't something we parents like to talk about over cocktails, which, by the way, we are ALWAYS drinking.
"Margery?"
"yes Wilhelm?"
"Your children had nits and worms of late?"
"Oh yes Wil, they're riddled with them"
"Oh good, could you pass the egg white? This Amaretto sour isn't quite totally coating the inside of my mouth!"

No, no. People like to hide the fact that their child/ren are crawling from head to foot with foreign infestations of a pest like nature. Nor for me though, I was ready, like a panther about to pounce on its prey, for any infestation to come our way. Worms we had had before, ghastly business, kept my eldest up in the night, not even The Mighty Calpol/fren could abate that. To Dr we went and worms was touted as cause of this, medicine dispensed and family was doused. So when the email came from school that my daughters class needed to dose their children up to the eyeballs to get rid of said infestation, we were ready and worms were culled, for the time being anyway.

Nits on the other hand, very different story. I longed for nits, prayed for the day that one person in my fold would scratch their head one too many times so that I could Tae Kwon Do my nit comb out and flush the little buggers out. I walked up and down the supermarket aisle reading the backs of nit comb packaging, lice formula packaging and trawled the Internet for the best way to rid one of these suckers.

The day finally came when our friends arrived with nitful children. Immediately I was gripped by panic. I tried to make my neck as long as possible so that my hair was as far away from the lived in hair as I could possibly be. My Xray vision kicked in and I was literally scanning bonces as they passed by. Once friends and children left I ran upstairs pulled my patented nit comb out of the packaging and set about my hair til my scalp bled, nothing. I threw myself down the stairs, grabbed the nearest child and frog marched my bewildered family (including the dog) up the stairs so that my nit comb might be successful. NOTHING.

It wasn't until my husband threatened to call the police if I combed anything again, that we let the guard down, and then my friends, the flood gates opened. My youngest started scratching her head like a mental, but I had heeded my husbands words, so had to rely only on my scanners again, and once we hit the bike shop on that Saturday afternoon, I was rewarded with a visual of two lice making merry in a flowing strand of my youngest's hair. I prized the bike from my eldest's hands and carried the youngest, still honking a bicycle horn that she'd removed stealthily from a display, straight to the car and made my husband drive like a thing possessed to the supermarket that contained the golden aisle.

I had practiced this manoeuvre over and over again in my head and so slid straight to aisle 4 bottom shelf and grabbed Hedrin Once Gel (best at first sign) The Nitty Gritty comb as well as a plastic "all original comb" for good measure and a Hedrin lice killer spray and back flipped to the only free do it yourself check out and stashed, clandestinely mind, all products in a well prepared bag.

Once home, the floor was mine. I stapled my youngest to a stool, sprayed her hair with the "Once" and combed all combs through her hair to my own triumphant glee every time I caught a louse or an egg or fluff even. This was a happy time for me. I then set about my own hair and found critters amongst the healing scabs. Deep joy! Sadly the other two members of the family yielded nothing, but two weeks later the eldest succumbed to lice and a week after that my best friend phoned to tell me that she had them and then one morning when my husband walked in to the bedroom to say he thought he had nits (he didn't) the two girls and I cheered with delight.

So the point is. These are rites of passage, rites that say that we have made it as a parent, we'll look back on these times fondly and long for the time we can lasoo our child to an inanimate object so we can scour their grizzly scalps with a fine toothed comb in search of something living. Treat it like the chicken pox, it's over before it's begun, and then, my friend, you can call yourself a parent, no?

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